If you are looking at your University booklist for next
term’s text books, or putting together your
bibliography of research materials for your
dissertation, then look no further than our specialist
academic sellers:

You can browse or search their combined stock via the
advanced search tab above or find their individual
contact details from their members’ pages.

Bonhams 1: T.
S. Eliot letters

In the sale of Books, Maps, Photographs and Manuscripts
at Bonhams in September will be included an exceptional
collection of private letters and presentation copies
from T. S. Eliot to the Faber publishing family.
Bonhams will auction the private and largely
unpublished correspondence with inscribed first
editions of the poet's work on Tuesday 20 September at
their New Bond Street rooms.

As well as over 80 letters to Enid Faber, the
collection features a series of nearly 50 letters from
Eliot to his godson Thomas Erle Faber (1927-2004), son
of his publisher and colleague Geoffrey Faber
(1889-1961). Having no children of his own, the poet
indulged the young Tom Faber with delightfully
entertaining illustrated letters and amusing poems
throughout his lifetime. It is this series of letters
(estimate £25,000-30,000), which gave birth to his Old
Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.

Bonhams 2: 'Literary and other
portraits'

A major sale of portraits will take place on 3rd
October when the Roy Davids collection is offered for
sale. Comprising portraits of writers, artists and
musicians the sale by Bonhams will be at their rooms at
New Bond Street, London.

It is the most extensive private collection of
historical portraits to come to auction in recent years
and will form the first ever sale entirely devoted to
portraits at an international auction house. Compiled
by the noted manuscript expert and collector Roy
Davids, formerly head of Printed Books and Manuscripts
at Sotheby’s, it contains almost 300 portraits of
writers, artists, musicians and philosophers.

The starting point for this rather lackadaisical
collection begun in the late 70’s, was re-discovering
one of the titles I had read as a small child. ‘Stories
from Chaucer’ fascinated me then, particularly its
rather soulful and dreamy illustrations by W. Heath
Robinson. What is perhaps more surprising is that this
small volume published in England, sometime between
1905 and 1915 had survived the breaking up and sale of
my Mother’s home in Perth, Western Australia when she
was 15, and her many subsequent moves there and
ultimately to Bath, England, Bermuda, Portsmouth and
Bath again before I could have been old enough to read
it. Sadly it did not emerge unscathed from the
Pickford’s store where the majority of our possessions
went up in flames in 1960.

So having greeted an old friend I began to collect the
series, called ‘Told to the Children’ and also ‘Shown
to the Children’ published by T C & E C Jack of
Edinburgh and London. I confess to having done no
research on the series beyond gratefully receiving a
carefully hand written list of known titles from a
friendly customer. The books were quite common and
cheap. They are still cheap but much less common. I
have always found it useful to have a few wants of
unappreciated trifles whose purchase can be used as a
sort of polite gesture in otherwise barren bookshops.

The books are undated but since I have 29 out of the
between 36 to 40 titles published, there are some
clues. The first group of nine titles appear to have
been published in 1905, and in New York by E P Dutton.
The format
for the series was established, the books are 5 5/8 x 4
¾ inches, bound in cloth with a simple art nouveau
decoration in gilt to the binding, with a rectangular
onlaid plate to the upper board. Each volume has 8
coloured plates, a range of illustrators were used,
including W Heath Robinson, Byam Shaw, F D Bedford, A S
Forrest and most frequently Katherine Cameron. The
books seemed to have been issued with dustwrappers as
well as in a cheaper version with no gilt and paper
covered boards.

The series editor was Louey Chisholm, and each book was
written by a well known children’s writer of the
period, such as H E Marshall, Amy Steedman or Mary
Macgregor. The books were designed for young children,
initially perhaps for reading aloud and included a
mixture of legends, such as King Arthur, Robin Hood,
Greek myths, fairy tales and a few religious titles. A
few précis of famous books were included, such as ‘The
Water Babies’, and almost the only American title,
‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’.

The series must have been a success, by 1908 at least
another 14 titles were in print and within ten years,
36 titles. The fullest list I have only includes the 36
titles but I have a copy of ‘More Stories from
Shakespeare’, dated 1917, not on that list. I have
speculated a total of about 40.

The charming art nouveau design for the binding was in
use until at least 1929. It changed, probably in the
30’s for a much more prosaic design, of decorated
cloth. I have only one example because I have always
looked for the original gilt version. It is noticeable
that the plates for the illustrations had never been
reset, Katherine Cameron’s plates for ‘Stories of King
Arthur’s Knights’ had deteriorated substantially
between the 1905 edition and those in the revised
binding.

The series provides an interesting record of what a
young middle class child might have been expected to
read in the early years of the century. Children today
have a wider range of material but a surprising number
of titles would not look out of place in a primary
school library.

I am in the process of producing a list of titles with
as much detail as I can find and I will be happy to
email this to anyone who would like it. I would also be
interested in further information on the subject -
contact: Charlotte
Robinson

Zouch Books goes 'Bricks and
Mortar'

ibooknet member and, until now, internet only
bookseller Zouch Books will open their new bookshop
in Melbourne, Derbyshire, on 6th September. They
will be open between 10.30am and 4.30pm daily (except
Monday and Thursday), including weekends and Bank
Holidays.

Situated in the Melbourne Hall Visitors Centre they can
be found at
Unit 7 (click for map) or contacted by
email or
phone: 07854 881845.

Big Gay Read

Launched by Chloe Poems at Manchester Pride, the annual
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender festival
traditionally held over the August Bank Holiday
weekend, the Big Gay Read is a national campaign
to discover the nations favourite Lesbian and Gay
novel.

Inspired by the BBC's Big Read it is a joint project
between Manchester, Salford and Blackpool libraries,
Commonword (a creative writing and publishing
organisation in the North West) and Time to Read (the
North West Libraries Reader Development Partnership)
and organisers hope it will introduce readers to a
wider range of novels.

Footnote: Lawyers for
DC
Comics, owners of the Batman and Robin comic
strips and publishers of a number of magazines in the
genre have issued a 'cease and desist' order to
Kathleen Cullen Fine Arts gallery in New York,
ordering that Mark Chamberlain's provocative homoerotic
representations of the 'dynamic duo' be taken down, or
face the legal consequences. They have also demanded
that she "hand over all unsold work and invoices for
the sold work".